


Limbic Resonance

by darkbluebox



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Don't Have to Know Sense8 Canon, Fanart, Found Family, Government Conspiracy, M/M, Mutant Powers, Prompt: medicine/drugs, Telepathic Bond, Trans Male Character, allfortheficexchange, god knows i don't, this may get dark and warnings are subject to change, yes that's right baby we got ART
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkbluebox/pseuds/darkbluebox
Summary: The near-empty pill bottle is a constant weight in the pocket of Nathaniel's joggers. He has stretched out the doses as far as he can, his head thumping and his vision blurring with half-formed visions of worlds that aren’t his. Enough to hold back the voices, but still there’s a hum in the silence, like he’s hearing a conversation through thin walls. It isn’t hearing the voices that scares him most, however; it’s the fear that if Nathaniel can hear the others, then they can hear him.Nathaniel can’t run from the voices in his head any longer. Stay in the shadows or stand with the cluster: it’s hardly a choice at all.
Relationships: Kevin Day & Neil Josten, Matt Boyd & Neil Josten, More to be added - Relationship, Neil Josten & The Foxes (All For The Game), Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 187
Kudos: 365
Collections: All For the Fic Exchange





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Biggest thank you to the #allfortheficexchange without whom this would probably not exist.
> 
> Prologue content warning: injuries, medication, abusive behaviour.

Nathaniel’s cuts sting as his mother wipes the antiseptic cream into the creases and crevices of his face. Her eyes are, as always, looking seven steps ahead, how to best hide the marks from the gaze of dark-eyed strangers, sorting through a list of excuses and dismissing them one by one until she finds something plausible enough to explain the harsh black bruising, the skin scraped red and raw.

Nathaniel reaches to pick at a scab forming on his left knee. She slaps his hand away before returning to the worst of the cuts. While his mother analyses each step ahead of them with feverous attention, Nathaniel’s mind is still skipping like a broken record as it replays the moment over and over. Men. Guns. Screaming. Running. Stumbling. Falling.

His mother had told him to tie his shoelaces properly before they left their dingy motel room. He thought he had.

She turns his head sharply to reach the criss-crossing scratches up by his ear, and Nathaniel hisses. He has learned to handle all kinds of pain without making a sound, but the enormous, echoing warehouse seems to amplify his breaths, bouncing them back and forth in an endless echo chamber that drums away at his ears. His mother tenses, glances over her shoulder before continuing. She doesn’t have to remind him to be quiet. Nathaniel had learned that lesson from his father.

When she steps to the side to rifle through their duffle bag, Nathaniel freezes at the sight of a boy standing behind her. He’s about Neil’s age, if he had to guess, but a good head taller. He’s wearing black pyjamas with red accents, blinking blearily as though he’s just woken up. His skin is a shade or two darker than Nathaniel’s, but not dark enough to hide the black _2_ carved into his left cheek.

He stares at Nathaniel. He says something in a language Nathaniel doesn’t speak, but somehow understands.

“Who are you?”

“Mum,” Nathaniel breathes. He and his mother have developed a language of their own, one that can fit every order and alert and warning into the tone of a single syllable. This is the tone that Nathaniel’s mother fears above all others.

Her eyes snap to Nathaniel’s face, follows his line of sight, before her attention jumps to the wristwatch on her arm. The screen was smashed during their escape, the alarm with it. Nathaniel missed his dosage.

She dives for the pills secreted in the inner pocket of her coat as Nathaniel stares, transfixed, at the boy before him. Feelings buzz around his head, feelings that don’t belong to him, that chafe and rub at awkward angles against his insides like they’re made for a different body. Curiosity. Excitement. Anticipation.

Something changes in the boy’s eyes as Nathaniel’s panic grows, like he can feel it too. His eyes catch on the cuts and bruises spilling across Nathaniel’s face. His eyes darken. Within that darkness, the faintest glimmer of recognition. “What happened to you?”

The pills rattle in the container. Several spill across the floor in his mother’s haste to pour them into her hand.

“Go away,” Nathaniel snaps. “Why won’t you all just leave me alone?”

“Don’t talk to it!” his mother hisses as she presses a bright red pill into his hand. Her nails scratch as she does so, another screeching note of pain lost amongst the chaotic symphony of his injuries.

The warehouse flickers around him, and other images leek through. Grey cement walls. A single bed pressed against the wall. Cold. Clinical. Nathaniel has never been in a hospital, but this is how he imagines it would smell.

His mother’s hand clenching in his hair yanks him back to reality. He throws the pill to the back of his throat and swallows it dry as the boy watches.

There’s a pang of disappointment that doesn’t come from Nathaniel. The boy flickers and turns fuzzy, and the press of unfamiliar feelings lightens. Nathaniel sucks in a deep breath.

“I don’t understand,” says the boy. His words buzz together like they’re coming down a crackly phone line. “Do you have any idea what this means? What you are?”

“Fuck off,” Nathaniel says. The boy shakes his head, and at last, mercifully, he disappears.

His mother’s hand is still fisted in Nathaniel’s hair. “What did I _tell_ you?”

“Never talk to them. Never look at them. Never acknowledge them. I’m sorry.” His mother promised him answers one day, when he was old enough to understand. For now, the questions burn inside him like the pinpricks of thousands of needles to his gut. Maybe the others have answers. Maybe they don’t. Either way, Nathaniel has to bury his curiosity, because every word could lead them closer to him.

His mother studies him for a moment that feels like forever. Her grip loosens. Her eyes roam over the corners and shadows of the warehouse, assessing.

“Time to go.”

Nathaniel agrees. He knows the warehouse is draughty, can see the whispers of a breeze tugging at his mother’s hair. But when he sucks in another deep breath, all he can taste is the cold, stale air of a cell deep beneath the ground.

They leave the warehouse under the cover of night and they don’t look back.


	2. A Taste of Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been three weeks, and Nathaniel can still smell smoke.

It’s been three weeks, and Nathaniel can still smell smoke. It clings to his clothes like an invisible outer layer but brings him little warmth as he hikes along the black roadside, alone for the first time in memory. He’s been following the glow of city lights for hours, feels like, but the city seems no closer than when he started out, like a desert mirage dancing forever out of reach.

The near-empty pill bottle is a constant weight in the pocket of Nathaniel's joggers. He has stretched out the doses as far as he can, his head thumping and his vision blurring with half-formed visions of worlds that aren’t his. Enough to hold back the voices, but still there’s a hum in the silence, like he’s hearing a conversation through thin walls. It isn’t hearing the voices that scares him most, however; it’s the fear that if Nathaniel can hear the others, then they can hear him.

He holds his last pill before him. It shines between his thumb and forefinger like a bead of blood. He would have six hours before this last pill began to leave his system, eight before it was gone entirely, another day’s journey before he had a chance of tracking down one of his mother’s suppliers. He had never been taken along to any of his mother’s exchanges. Her paranoia about anyone laying eyes on Nathaniel reached new heights every time the pills were involved. A seemingly impossible feat considering Mary’s usual anxiety levels, but if there was one thing his mother excelled at it was beating the odds.

Up until three weeks ago, anyway.

Eventually Nathaniel gives up on chasing the glow of the city. He finds an abandoned encampment of ripped tents and make-shift shelters left behind by squatters. He bundles himself up under a leaning hunk of corrugated iron held up by a flimsy stack of wooden planks and pulls a notebook from his duffel with numbing fingers and starts to scrawl today’s times. He’s been tracking the murmurs, periods of activity and rest, differentiating them, studying as much as he dares. Stupid, his mother would call him. Nathaniel can’t help himself; his mother promised him answers one day, but she’s in no position to provide them anymore. He has to understand the danger if he has any hope of surviving it, and that means probing the parts of his mind his mother never let him touch.

If patterns hold steady, three or four of the… of _them_ should be waking up within the next hour, just before he swallows his last blocker. If “waking up” is the right term. Nathaniel is vaguely uncomfortable with the personification, would rather think of them as something less like…people. It’s easier to keep his distance when they’re just abstract noises buzzing around in his head.

But wake up is what they do, and so it is the term he uses.

If he times it right, he can sleep through the more active hours and travel under cover of darkness. Stave off the worst of the withdrawal effects.

He tugs at the roots of his hair, counts the number of days he has before it will need re-dying, and sighs. His breath hovers in the air like smoke. Nathaniel’s life is nothing but a battle against countdown after countdown, running from the big, blank _zero_ that means his time is up.

His wristwatch starts to bleat like an air-raid siren. He raises the last pill to his lips.

Something collides with the side of his head, hard. Nathaniel realises, belatedly, that it was his own fist.

The pill slips through his fingers and skitters off into the dust. Nathaniel swears, falls to his knees and starts picking through the rocks for the tell-tale glint of his last hope.

Out of control, his hands snap back from the gravel. Like a confused marionette, Nathaniel throws himself to the ground.

“What the fuck,” Nathaniel grunts.

“Now, isn’t that interesting? Kevin’s little ghost is a real boy after all.” The words start fuzzy and distant, growing stronger with each syllable as Nathaniel’s withdrawal worsens.

Nathaniel shoulders himself over onto his back. His hands aren’t fighting him anymore, but they’re not exactly _his_ again either.

A short, blonde man is standing over him with a smile sharp enough to cut. It doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s dressed in black, well-fitting clothes, like he’s preparing to break into someone’s house. The way he’s staring, Nathaniel feels like he might be the house in question.

Nathaniel’s mother’s orders snap through him like a drumbeat. He screws his eyes shut, grits his teeth, thinks _not real, not real, not real._

“Not exactly a warm welcome. Weren’t you expecting company? You rolled out the welcome mat, after all.”

He had pushed the dosages too far. He should have known, should have thought, should have prepared- his mother would have killed him. Luckily, there was someone else on hand to do the job for her.

_Mother, mother, mother. Someone has issues._

The thought chafes. It isn’t his.

The pill, he needs the pill, he needs-

His hand – Andrew’s hand – _Andrew? How does he know his name?_ – wraps around his throat.

“Not yet, ghostie.” Andrew’s words lilt up and down weirdly, like his vocal cords are walking a tightrope. Is he high? His pupils are too wide. His thoughts are unintelligible, meandering, and the confusion is seeping into Nathaniel’s mind like second-hand smoke.

Yes. He’s medicated out of his fool mind. Falling into the trench that comes between one dosage and the next, just like Nathaniel.

“You’re smart enough to have survived this long, but you’re not going to last camped out alone in the dark.” Andrew crouches over Nathaniel, who can’t help but let his eyes trail up to meet Andrew’s. They’re hazel. Bright. Searching. Nathaniel flinches from the intensity, thanks every God he doesn’t believe in that he’s wearing his colour contacts. “They’ll catch up to you, and when that happens, you’ll become a liability to the rest of us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nathaniel gasps through the pressure of his own hand at his throat. Then he realises he’s talking, and nearly bites his own tongue off in anger.

“You really don’t, do you?” Nathaniel’s hand adjusts its grip. He can feel his own pulse thrumming through his fingers. “Let’s make a deal. Give me a truth and I’ll give you the pill.”

Nathaniel’s eyes slide to the red glint in the earth. They’re non-addictive, in theory, but it’s not that kind of need burning through him like a flare. It’s the same need that tells the rabbit to run from the fox, the mouse to hide beneath the floorboards. The need that pulled him away from the burning debris that was once his mother and forced one foot in front of the other on the trek that took him to where he is now. The need to run. To hide. To survive.

It pushes him to open his mouth and let the words spill out. “My mother is dead.”

Andrew nods. Nathaniel can feel the way the fact folds itself up and slots itself into the place in Andrew’s head he made for it. Like he already knew but wanted it in Nathaniel’s words.

Nathaniel’s hand trembles, releases, and is his once more.

“A deal is a deal. Stay gone and stay quiet. No more buzzing around up here.” He puts a finger to his temple and twirls it. “You’re either one of us, against us, or nothing at all. No middle ground. You’re making the others nervous.”

Nathaniel grabs the pill, doesn’t even stop to brush the dirt off before pushing it between his lips. “Not going to be a problem.”

Andrew’s head lolls like it isn’t attached properly to his body as he laughs. The sound is like nails on a chalkboard. Nathaniel can hear an echo to it that doesn’t match their surroundings. A small room, wooden floorboards, single bed, sunlight glowing behind drawn curtains. “You’re nothing _but_ a problem.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Nathaniel mutters. He feels the familiar blanket of protection begin to press gentle pressure upon the corners of his mind. He can be nothing. He’s never tried to be anything else.

“Well,” says Andrew, his voice growing faint. “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure.” He flickers before Nathaniel’s eyes like a candle in a breeze. Nathaniel skates his gaze over him once more despite himself. Most of his curiosity has been crushed down and killed by years of terror, but there’s enough of a spark left that he devours every detail he can take before Andrew disappears.

“Not exactly a warm farewell,” Nathaniel says quietly. Andrew raises his eyebrow as his own words are turned back on him.

“What a shame. You might have been interesting, after all.”

Then he disappears.

Nathaniel sits in the silence and breathes in the faint, lingering smell of smoke. It doesn’t smell of gasoline anymore. More like cigarettes.

He breathes and waits for the cold night to pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always Sunny title card flashes on screen: "Andrew bullies a homeless addict."  
> Meet-cutes, ammiright?
> 
> I honestly didn't think I'd get this chap posted until next WEEK but I got so much more feedback and enthusiasm than I expected from the prologue so I busted my ass to get the ball rolling properly. Basically, THANK YOU to everyone who has shown interest so far. Have an early update as a show of gratitude. <3


	3. Guns and Fists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel tries to keep his promise. It does not go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: death, blood, violence, references to abuse.

His mother’s contact is a round, older man who smells of Doritos and sweat. The office behind his betting shop has a dozen portable TVs showing different horse races and sports matches taking place simultaneously around the world. His eyes, which are half-hidden by dark shades, flit between the screens and occasionally to Nathaniel as though he’s another two-dimensional outcome to bet on.

The bookies gig is a good cover, but inconvenient for Nathaniel. He attracted more than one glance from the shop’s older clientele when he slipped through the doors and into the back room. He can still feel their gazes itching at the back of his neck.

“One thousand,” says the bookie. “Take it or leave it.”

Nathaniel knows he’s being screwed over, but he’s desperate and exhausted and short on time. He has to pick his fights, and he’ll choose this guy over his visitors any day of the week. Besides, he made a deal. _Stay gone._ “Fine.”

“Pay now. Pickup tomorrow morning, before the shop opens. Wait ‘round the back.”

Nathaniel scowls. “Not soon enough.”

“Tough tits.”

Nathaniel shakes his head. “I have no reason to trust you. I’m not paying upfront.”

The bookie shrugs. “Not my problem, kid.”

Nathaniel hisses a curse through his teeth. “I don’t have that much on me,” he lies. “I can do seven hundred now. The rest tomorrow.”

The bookie lowers his sunglasses with a flick of his wrist, staring intently at Nathaniel as though he’s expecting a reaction. Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t get it, and after a moment, he slides the shades back up his nose. “Fine. Don’t be late.”

Nathaniel leaves the shop with a bad taste in his mouth. The gap left between doses will be risky, especially so soon after the incident, but he has no other choice.

He’ll find somewhere to hole himself up and take the heaviest sleeping tablets he can lay hands on until it’s time to head back into town. It was a trick he learned from his mother. If they ran out of pills between one dealer and the next, Nathaniel would find himself waking up in cars he didn’t recognise driving through counties he’d never been to, more sleeping pills than was likely safe burning the back of his throat raw. He would blink blearily at a sky that was the wrong colour until his mother noticed he was coming around and all but forced another pill down his throat.

He chooses the motel carefully, measuring the advantages and disadvantages before settling on the one he thinks his mother would have picked. Dull, drab, but most importantly, generic. Nothing in the rooms that would distinguish it from any other shitty motel anywhere else in the world.

He still has a few hours before the shitstorm hits, so once he’s checked in he sits cross-legged on the hard single bed and goes through his notebook.

His mother had been as tight-lipped with Nathaniel as she had been with the strangers they passed in the street, but he had gleamed enough from whispered conversations at quiet pay-phones and snatches of memories from his father’s house to put a rough idea together.

Nathaniel isn’t human. Not in the traditional sense. His mind is capable of things that most minds can’t do, _shouldn’t_ do. The pills suppress it, make him normal.

There are organisations tasked with hunting people like Nathaniel. Shady government-sanctioned officials who want to strap him down and open up his brain to see what makes him tick. His father works for one of these organisations. The Butcher, they call him, because of what they do to the people he brings in for them. Nathaniel is going to spend the rest of his life trying not to become one of those people.

Which is why he can’t stop running. Can’t stop looking over his shoulder. Can’t come out from the shadows. Can’t acknowledge the voices that gnaw at the corners of his mind. Every connection is a threat. Every witness brings his father a step closer to finding him.

He waits until the sky is dark before swallowing the sleeping pills. His night is dark and dreamless.

The next thing he remembers is his watch alarm beeping incessantly at his ear. Nathaniel rolls out of the bed in a tangle of arms and legs and sheets. The slit of sky he catches sight of through the curtains is pink with pre-dawn light. He tugs the curtain the rest of the way closed, cursing his own stupidity, and yawns. His eyes itch painfully – he forgot to take out his contacts before he fell asleep.

There’s someone standing by his bedside table. He looks like Andrew, but his emotions take a different shape in Nathaniel’s mind. He’s bent over, examining the abandoned packet of sleeping tablets. “You shouldn’t take these. They’re fine for humans, but not for us. They’ll fuck your system up for days, and you’ll end up worse off than before.” He’s wearing a white doctor’s coat. A wave of nausea washes over Nathaniel and he snatches the packet from the table, shoves it into a drawer. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The language, the brand, the label, all clues that can narrow down his location.

“What makes you think I give a shit where you are?” The doctor folds his arms, but Nathaniel meets him with nothing but a steady glare. “Whatever, suit yourself.”

“Get out,” Nathaniel grinds through his teeth. He isn’t sure if it’s the aggression, the wave of panic and horror rolling through his mind, or sheer surprise, but the man vanishes.

Nathaniel switches his contacts as quickly as he can, fingers shaking. Pulls a baggy hoody over his head and draws the strings tight. He’ll look like a lunatic wearing shades at the crack of dawn under heavy cloud cover, but he can’t face the outside world right now without covering as much of himself as possible.

Nathaniel runs to the bookie’s place. He found a motel as close as he could, but his lungs are still burning by the time he arrives. His watch says 7:58. The shop is due to open at eight.

He finds a rusty back door down the side street, but when he reaches up to knock, the door swings open under his fist.

_Something’s wrong_ , his mother’s voice whispers. _Run_.

He can’t run. He’s already had one encounter too many today. Another person who can identify him, who can track him.

He left his mother’s gun in an airport trash can three states ago, another item that he’ll have to work out how to replace on his own. He couldn’t bring himself to shoplift a knife, a weakness he regrets as he enters the dark building.

He follows the sound of static to the bookie’s office and stops in the doorway like his feet have been glued to the ground.

The bookie is slumped over his desk with a hole blown through his head. The blinds behind are flecked with red. One of his TVs has fallen to the floor, screen smashed. On another, static. On another, a stoic anchor-man reads the news in a language Nathaniel doesn’t speak to unhearing ears.

Nathaniel should be ten blocks away by now. He hasn’t moved a muscle.

The bookie is still warm, his blood not yet congealed as it spreads across the flyers and bills scattered across his desk. Nathaniel is more interested in the contents of his desk drawers, kneeling to avoid the pooling blood as he picks the lock of the bottom drawer with unsteady hands. Inside are several stacks of bills in various currencies which he pockets without a second thought. The money is bad news as well as good; it banishes the last fraction of a possibility that this was a straightforward robbery. No sign of blocker pills either. Nathaniel is fucked.

“There are two men by the alleyway entrance. You’ll have to go out the front,” says a voice. Nathaniel looks up to see a young woman in a dull grey prison uniform standing next to the window. She steps back from the blinds and nods towards him, her rainbow-dipped bangs swaying with the action. “Move fast. They don’t look friendly.” She doesn’t spare the dead man a second glance. Her tone is not unfriendly, her appearance strangely demure, but the mind reaching out to his is stony, resolute.

Nathaniel pushes back the knee-jerk response to tell her to shove it. He slips down the hall and jiggles open the door to the main shop, angling his head away from the security camera by the door.

He’s in such a rush he forgets about the shop alarm. As he kicks the main doors open it screams to life. The street beyond is still shaking off the sluggishness of early morning, but it won’t stay quiet for long. Nathaniel breaks into a sprint.

He turns a corner, and for a hair’s breadth of a second, he thinks he has escaped unseen.

A gloved hand clamps down on his shoulder, hard, and something gun-shaped presses into his spine.

“What’s the hurry, kid? We just want to talk.”

Nathaniel has encountered these kinds of people before. The foot soldiers of the hidden empires, snatching people up in the dead of night and cleaning up any little messes that might occur in the process. He knows what their idea of a talk will entail.

“Let me help.” The girl – who’s mind seems to hold two names at once, making it harder for Nathaniel to pin one down – steps into his eyeline. The man’s grip on his shoulder is bone-shatteringly tight, but Nathaniel writhes despite himself, ready to dislocate it if he has too.

“Trust me,” she says. “I’m good in a fight.”

Nathaniel has no idea what this illusion of his mind is going to do in the face of two large, armed men, but panic is biting him hard enough to draw blood, and the wave of calm assurance smoothing from her mind to his is pulling his guard down. She doesn’t want Nathaniel to be caught any more than he does.

Nathaniel’s head droops. “Please.”

The men behind him take the gesture as submission. It’s the biggest mistake they’ll ever make.

His body twists in a way that it has never moved before. Nathaniel’s feet shift into a stance that braces his weight against the man behind him, and suddenly he’s slamming into him with more force than Nathaniel thought he held. It’s the strange, dizzying feeling that he felt when Andrew took control of his hands, but this time the sensation squirms through his whole body. If he were still in control of his lungs, he would gasp.

“Please relax. It is difficult to do this while you’re panicking,” his voice mutters to himself.

“He’s a sensate, alright.” While his partner rolls across the floor, gasping for air, his partner levels a gun at Nathaniel’s head. “Who else is in your cluster? Jackie Chan?”

Nathaniel’s hands raise themselves. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says his mouth, sweetly. Nathaniel has never said anything sweetly in his life, but it’s true nonetheless. He recognises the words _cluster_ and _sensate_ from living with his father as well as phone calls he listened to while his mother thought he was asleep. She had offered him no explanation, only a furious hiss that they were words he must never, never repeat if he wanted to survive.

The agent moves at the same time as the girl wearing Nathaniel’s skin does. They slam into each other, the fight quick and brutal. The agent clearly doesn’t want to use the gun, won’t risk killing an asset unless his life is in danger, but nonetheless she is quick to wrangle it from his hands before landing a hard kick to his head. Nathaniel is flexible, but not _that_ flexible, and he’s sure he’ll be feeling the pain of that stretch later along with a million other cuts and bruises.

With both agents momentarily floored, Nathaniel’s body suddenly becomes his own again.

“I suspect you might be better at this part,” says rainbow girl.

Nathaniel wavers. The aftermath of their little puppet dance has his insides feeling like his outsides.

“We don’t have time for this.” She steps forward and places a hand on his shoulder. Nathaniel feels the weight of it as though it’s really there, as solid and terrifying as the agent who grabbed him. “ _Run.”_

Nathaniel runs.

He climbs onto the first inter-city bus he can find without looking at where it’s headed, throws back two more sleeping tablets, and waits for sleep to take him.

The last thing he sees is a flash of bleached-white hair and dark, curious eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagined the bookie as looking a lot like Danny Devito (sorry dan) but I couldn't mention this in-fic because there is no way Neil would ever make or understand that reference.
> 
> In other news, I plan to make "rainbow girl" my street name starting immediately.


	4. On Cloud Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel broke his promise. Andrew isn't pleased.

The coach pulls into a gas station several hours later, startling Nathaniel awake. He’s out of his seat before the driver has turned the engine off, stomach churning. He pushes past the other passengers so that he’s first out the door, and barely makes it into one of the grimy gas station toilet cubicles before he’s bringing up all of his stomach’s contents. Not that there’s much to bring up; Nathaniel can’t remember the last time he ate.

The doctor that looked like Andrew had been right; the sleeping pills were a short-term solution that Nathaniel is paying for threefold. He had never had this reaction to the medication his mother gave him, and he now suspects that her preferred brand of sleeping pill was not one that could be found anywhere as above-board as a pharmacy.

“You have a strange understanding of what constitutes a problem,” says a familiar, lilting voice. Nathaniel blinks, wipes the sweat-slick strands of his fringe from his eyes and meets Andrew’s eyes across the toilet bowl. He groans.

“This,” Andrew continues, undeterred, flicking his fingers between himself and Nathaniel, “This is a problem. You broke our deal, ghostie.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Nathaniel is too tired, too woozy, too just about everything to hold back the retort. He’s out of options; he’s having this conversation whether he wants to or not. “Get the fuck out of my head.”

“Get the fuck out yourself,” Andrew says. “I’m not the one blasting my personal business on loudspeaker to make the whole cluster come running. Calling on poor, soft-hearted Renee to save you from the nasty men? Low blow.”

“I didn’t ask for anyone’s help.”

“Your entire existence is a cry for help. You don’t even know you’re doing it. Not sure if that makes you a genius or just sad. No, wait, I am. It’s sad.” Andrew pouts exaggeratedly. “Mother dearest never taught her son how to fend for himself. Did I guess correctly?”

Nathaniel can’t reply, too busy retching into the toilet bowl once again.

Andrew watches him with a lopsided smile. He takes a slow drag from the cigarette dangling between his fingers and Nathaniel tastes the nicotine as though it’s flooding his own lungs with smoke.

He wants to leave the dingy cubicle, grab something bland but edible from the rest station and get back on the bus until it’ll take him no further, but he knows Andrew will follow him. All they need to do is pass a couple road signs and Andrew will have his exact location.

Andrew’s eyes follow Nathaniel through a cloud of cigarette smoke. An uncomfortable prickle at the back of Nathaniel’s neck tells him that Andrew is following the line of his thoughts with ease. Suddenly, viciously, Nathaniel pushes back, scrabbling for something, anything, he can use to defend himself.

Pushing at Andrew’s mind is like running at a brick wall. Nothing.

Andrew’s smile grows. “Now who’s invading who’s head? Nosy, nosy. Keep it up and I may have to kill you.”

“You’re going to kill me regardless.”

Andrew waves his hand in a non-committal gesture. “Jury’s still out. The bleeding hearts want to adopt you, obviously. Kevin thinks you could be useful. The rest are indifferent.” Andrew’s eyes flash dangerously as he says Kevin’s name, although his expression doesn’t change. “They’ll come around.”

“Is all that supposed to mean something to me?” Nathaniel closes his eyes. Kevin. Kevin. How does he know that name?

The memory of a wary child flickers behind his eyelids. A tattoo. Another ghost swallowed by the blockers.

Nathaniel would have preferred not to remember.

“If you’re really curious, we could make another deal. Not for the others, they’re not for trading. For this.” Andrew taps two fingers to his temple. “You let me in, I let you in.”

“You’re already in.” Nathaniel waved his fingers back and forth between them. “You’re here. You see me. You can…” He doesn’t finish the thought out loud, knows he doesn’t need to. His thoughts are loud enough.

“This…” Andrew copies Nathaniel’s gesture, fingers loose and sloppy. “This is nothing. I hear only the scraps you leave out for taking. None of the juicy bits. So, let’s clear the air a little. A question for a question.”

“Will you leave me alone if I agree?”

“Depends on how you answer yours.”

Nathaniel meets Andrew’s gaze without flinching. He isn’t sure how long he was asleep on the coach, but the contacts in his eyes are dry and itching. The driver’s break will soon be over, and Nathaniel can’t afford to be stuck in this cubicle with Andrew when it is. “Fine.”

“What are you running from?”

Nathaniel’s heart tips around in his chest. A dozen memories flash through his mind – glinting knives and bright lights and raised voices. Andrew’s expression doesn’t change but he knows Andrew sees them too.

“My father,” Nathaniel replies at last.

Andrew nods sharply, chewing over the new morsel of truth Nathaniel has offered him. “Your turn.”

“How are you blocking me out?” He’s answered with silence, so he elaborates. “The others, I could hear them. Sort of. I was feeling what they were feeling, seeing through their eyes. From you, there’s…nothing. You can get inside my head, but I can’t get into yours. It’s a one-way street.” A trick like that would be invaluable if Nathaniel could master it. Especially for as long as it took him to lay hands on more blockers.

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Straight for the jugular. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me, ghostie.”

Nathaniel scowls. “A deal’s a deal.”

Andrew raises a finger to his lips and prods it into the corner of his smile, twisting it into the flesh of his cheek. “Flying high, baby,” he drawls.

“What?”

“Too high. The drugs keep me so high that no one else can reach me. I’m up on cloud nine, watching the rest of you scrabble around below. Like ants.”

Nathaniel ignores most of the loopy tirade, stripping it down to the one morsel that may be useful to him. “What kind of drugs?”

Andrew laughs. “You don’t want me to answer that. And you’re out of turns! Better luck next time.”

Nathaniel huffs. Andrew’s probably right; being out of his mind on drugs would be too much of a risk. Being on the run is hard enough fully sober; he’ll take voices in his head over drug abuse and all its trappings any day. “So? Did I pass your test? Will you leave me alone?”

Andrew’s eyes flick over him once again. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see.” He lets out another slow breath of smoke. When it dissipates, Andrew is gone.

Nathaniel climbs back onto the bus, alone once again. Andrew’s smoky smell still clings to his clothes, following him back into his dreams.

His sleep is restless, full of glinting teeth and searching eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel: I'm having an extremely bad time right now  
> Andrew, popping up from out of nowhere like a demonic jack-in-the-box: and it's about to get a whole lot worse!
> 
> Edit: I just had to edit Neil's name back to Nathaniel like fifty fuckin times jesus christ help me  
> EDIT 2: Art credit to the amazing sp-der on tumblr!!!! Find the tumblr post [here](https://darkblueboxs.tumblr.com/post/617381370667433984/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah) and send them some love <3


	5. Trust Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Self-imposed house arrest, and an unexpected visit.

Nathaniel doubts his newest supplier would be up to his mother’s standards, but beggars can’t be choosers. The pills are a faded pink, several shades lighter than the kind he’s used to, and the kid that hands them over warns Nathaniel that it’ll take some time for his body to adjust to the new dosage. The blocker is a sweet, reassuring tingle at the back of his tongue and then it’s gone, but the haze that slowly spirals across his mind is not the one he’s used to.

Five minutes later, Nathaniel has brought the pill back up along with most of his stomach lining. Naturally, his own body is turning on him. He isn’t sure what else he expected, honestly.

The haze fades. Nathaniel groans.

He has to keep trying. Either his body adjusts enough to keep the blockers down or –

There is no _or_. Until then, he’s on self-imposed house arrest.

Nathaniel finds an empty house to squat in, in a suburb quiet yet still low-rent enough for his presence not to draw too much attention. The place is decrepit and dusty, filled with mouldy furniture cowering under grey-white sheets. The only occupants Nathaniel has to share the space with are the spiders, and that’s how he prefers it.

He washes trail mix down with bottled water and fans himself as he glares at the wonky blinds across the room. He’s had two days of radio silence from the others, from the – what was the word Andrew had used? – from the cluster, but there’s no guarantee it will last, and so the curtains remain drawn. He passes the time imagining the landscape that might lie on the other side, an activity that becomes increasingly torturous the longer he waits. The house may be musty and unpleasantly warm, but worst of all it is empty. By the third day, Nathaniel almost misses the company, as violent and unpleasant as it was. The boredom is going to kill him before his father’s people get the chance.

He draws a map in the dusty floorboards, an approximation of the major routes he might take once he’s back in traveling shape. The Mexican border is temptingly close. A passport won’t be difficult to procure, but a passable accent will be. He thinks his mother was considering Mexico as their next port of call before she –

 _“¡Por supuesto, si!_ You should totally come to Mexico, it’s amazing here.” A heavy arm lands on Nathaniel’s shoulder, heavy and terrifyingly real. Nathaniel lashes out with an elbow instinctively, but it passes through the stranger like a knife through fog. The stranger removes his arm and raises his hands in the air defensively. “ _Mierda_ , sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I mean, shit, I’m not even supposed to be talking to you anyway, Andrew warned us all off, but I heard you making your vacation plans and couldn’t help myself.” His eyes land on Nathaniel’s dirt map. Nathaniel scrubs over it with the toe of his sneaker, even though it’s already too late.

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. I mean, I figured you were my side of the world what with the hours you’ve been keeping, but I won’t mention, you know.” He gestured vaguely to Nathaniel’s scuffed-out map. “Honestly, I don’t know why Andrew’s getting all on the defensive over you. Well, I guess I do, but whatever. You’re clearly not one of the… you know. The bad guys. Oh, sorry, how rude of me. My name’s Nicky.”

Nicky holds out a hand. Nathaniel stares at it like he’s never seen one before. Nicky’s thoughts are an overwhelming current matched only by his mouth, and what’s most disconcerting is how _genuine_ his thoughts are. Either Nicky’s thoughts are so loud that he has drowned Nathaniel out entirely, or he’s immune to Nathaniel’s panic. Either way, he shows no sign of hesitation in the face of Nathaniel’s paralysis.

“This is usually the part of the conversation where you give me a name in return, but I’ll give you a free pass this time seeing as you’re fresh meat.” Nicky’s smile is blinding. It puts Nathaniel on the defensive even quicker than Andrew’s drug-induced mania. “Kevin was the only one of us who even believed you existed, you know. We told him, nine to a cluster, that’s how it is for everyone. Turns out the twins count as one, though, which makes you lucky number ten! Welcome to the family and all that.”

Nathaniel finds his tongue at last. “You’re from Mexico?”

“ _What was your first clue?_ ” Nicky replies in Spanish, before switching back to English. “Not that I was eavesdropping, but if you want help with the accent, I’m your man. Just shout and I’ll take the mental reins for you. Might be fun seeing what that pretty mouth can do, _¿Tú sabes?_ ”

“No,” says Nathaniel quickly, “to all of the above.”

Nicky pouts. “No fun.” He stands, kicking at the dust before moving to the blinds. “Hate to break it to you, but your place sucks ass.”

“Thanks.”

“Aren’t you bored? How long have you been here?” He eyes the wrappers and empty water bottles littering the floor and wrinkles his nose.

Nathaniel shrugs. It’s becoming increasingly evident that his input is irrelevant. He can only hope that Nicky will find him boring enough to leave.

“You should come visit me. I’m at the Zócalo right now, you should see it.”

“Mmm.”

“No, I mean it. Right now, come on.”

Nathaniel looks at him blankly.

Nicky smacks his head. “Oh. Of course, you’ve never… that’s pretty sad, actually. See how I’m here, right? Not in reality, you know, but up here?” He taps a finger to his temple. “So it’s a two-way street. I can visit you here, and you can visit me where I am. Which is at the Zócalo, it’s like the main square in Mexico City, it’s famous and shit.”

For a moment, Nathaniel thinks he hears a crowd, children shouting, laughter. The rumble of car engines and bells ringing. A breath of gusty summer air tugs at the hair on the back of his neck. The air is thinner, like he’s at a higher altitude, a little dizzying.

He remembers the feeling of his mother’s hand yanking at his hair. His tongue suddenly feels too big for his mouth. “I…”

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to.” The sounds fade. The silence of the deserted house presses back down upon him. “Another time, right?”

Nathaniel swallows. “Why would you tell me?”

“Huh?”

“You told me exactly where you are. I could have…” Nathaniel trails off. There’s a flash of something in Nicky’s expression that shows he understands as well as Nathaniel does where that sentence ends.

“Call it a trust fall. Did they ever make you do those in school?” Nicky laughs as Nathaniel shakes his head. “Yeah, figures. My partners always dropped me. Thought it was funny watching the gay kid get a concussion.” There’s a moment of wariness in Nicky’s eyes that is older than the rest of him. For a moment, Nathaniel sees the cracks in his cheer, but as soon as he notices them it’s as though they seal themselves up under his gaze. Nicky smiles brightly, too brightly, compensating. “I figure you’ll be different, though. You don’t seem much like those guys.”

“You shouldn’t be so trusting,” Nathaniel says, before realising how much it sounds like a threat. “I mean-”

“I get you.” Nicky waves him off. “Listen, I gotta go before my cousin wakes up. But honestly? A little trust won’t kill you, buddy.” Nicky flashes a peace sign, and then he’s gone.

“Yes, it will,” Nathaniel says to an empty room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel Wesninski, social distancing CHAMP  
> *also* if you haven't seen it already, please check out sp-der's amazing art in chapter four!


	6. Breaking Bread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil heads north and finds himself in familiar territory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating while still slightly feverish is probably not the best strategy I've ever had but-

Instead of crossing the border to Mexico, Nathaniel turns tail and heads north. The new blockers aren’t as reliable as his mother’s supply was, but they’ll get him as far up the east coast as he needs them to. He wishes he could say that he left Nicky and the rest in the dusty southern states, but despite the drug-induced silence in his head he can still feel the weight of them on him like bricks lining the bottom of his rucksack. On more than one occasion, he jerks awake to thumping club music that rattles through him with no obvious source, a headache-inducing reminder that these blockers are far from perfect. 

New York City was always far too close to Baltimore for his mother’s tastes, but Nathaniel clings to the illusion of safety that the rat-race metropolis brings him. While small town gossip works as a shield against intruders, there’s benefits to the endless apartment blocks where no one looks twice at a ragged kid kicking around in the gutter.

Another bonus to the big cities; large populations mean more dealers mean more blockers. It’s only a matter of tracking down the right people. _Carefully_.

He’s weaving his way through downtown Manhattan – the city can be as neatly organised in its grids and squares as it likes, it would still take Nathaniel a lifetime to learn – when he stops dead, staring at a tiny, brightly-coloured café sandwiched between a Starbucks and a vegan tearoom. The advertised specials are meaningless to Nathaniel, who has mostly been living on pot noodles and pop tarts since the age of ten, but a sweet, doughy smell tugs at a memory that he can’t possibly have. Like a knee-jerk response, Nathaniel slips through the glass doors and hops into a booth before he can stop to question what he’s doing.

Somehow, he knows the layout of the restaurant before he’s even inside. That should be setting off any number of alarm bells, but Nathaniel has never been to this city before. Rationally speaking, it’s no more dangerous than the fifty student haunts, hot dog carts and pretzel shops he passed on the way here.

He isn’t due another dosage for a few hours, but he slides another blocker down his throat while pretending to study the menu just to be on the safe side. Despite it being the height of the lunch hour, he’s the only customer.

“What can I get ya?” says a woman Nathaniel’s age through a mouthful of gum.

Nathaniel stares at the laminated menu for several seconds without seeing it. “Uh, what’s that smell? The sugary smell?”

“Aw, that’ll be the Pan de Mallorca. I think they just took a batch outta the oven. You want coffee with that? I’ll put it down as a breakfast deal for ya.”

“It isn’t breakfast time,” says Nathaniel blankly.

“I know,” she says, and winks. Not sure what else she’s waiting for, Nathaniel pretends to be absorbed in fidgeting with the salt shaker.

The bell over the door jangles and the waitress leaves Nathaniel to greet the second customer. “Sorry, Matt, someone beat ya to your seat.”

“There’s plenty others,” says a low, easy voice. At the base of Nathaniel’s skull is that feeling again, that knee-jerk familiarity. “The usual please, Carla.”

“I can move,” Nathaniel mumbles, getting to his feet. He grinds to a halt when he meets the newcomer’s eyes.

They’re not remarkable eyes by any means, deep brown with laughter lines around the corners, but when Nathaniel meets them there’s a tingle at the base of his skull. It’s like a hook digging into the soft skin of his nape, but grounding instead of painful, a harness instead of a leash. It’s a sensation the drugs are supposed to block. Nathaniel’s hand goes reflexively to his pocket, but Matt reacts like he heard the intention sparking through Nathaniel’s mind. Because he did.

“Wait. Please.” Matt steps forward, his hand stopping Nathaniel’s arm in its tracks. Nathaniel’s breath catches painfully as his mother’s voice screams at him, _run, run, run_. But louder than that, another voice, Matt’s voice, saying _stay, please, I want to help._

Nathaniel’s legs give out of their own accord and he collapses back into the booth. Matt takes the seat opposite him, sending the waitress away with a quick nod of reassurance.

“Don’t…please…” Nathaniel manages. Matt seems to understand what he’s asking for, even if Nathaniel doesn’t, and he leans forward, everything in his body language projecting _safe, you’re safe, I promise_. It’s a lie so comforting it’s painful.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Matt says quietly. “You’re our number ten.”

Nathaniel shivers. Nicky had called him ten too. He isn’t sure how it’s all connected, how Matt can know these things, can speak to him without words even while Nathaniel’s on his blockers-

“They don’t work at a close range like this. Not these ones, anyway.” Matt taps Nathaniel’s hand which is clenched around the pill bottle. Nathaniel forces himself to unclench. He didn’t even notice he had removed them from his pocket. “Sorry. Sorry, this overwhelming you, I can feel it, Jeez.” Matt pinches his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and for a moment his headache throbs in Nathaniel’s head too. “We haven’t met. I’m a part of your cluster. I heard you sometimes, drifting in and out between dosages but I could never cut through enough to talk to you. I guess that was the point.” Matt collapses into momentary guilt. “Shit. Shit, we’re not supposed to talk to you, not until Andrew has…” Matt’s gaze jumps to a point by Nathaniel’s shoulder. Nathaniel turns, expecting to see-

Whatever, whoever, he expected isn’t there. Or if they are, he can’t see them. The waitress sets two coffees on their table along with two coiled pastries dusted in sugar.

“Thank you,” says Matt. His smile is a too wide, and when the waitress turns away it collapses into mild panic. He looks to the space beside Nathaniel and breaks into a nervous stream of a language Nathaniel doesn’t recognise.

Nathaniel blinks. He’s not had enough experience with whatever this is to be used to much, but usually the others’ languages slide and slot into his mind like they’re his own. Matt’s words, however, remain impenetrable.

“It’s Japanese.” Matt answers his unspoken question. “You’d need Kevin to help you understand it – I can speak it because he’s sharing with me right now, but you’re on the blockers so you can’t- shit, sorry, shouldn’t be throwing names around. I mean, you already met Kevin, apparently, so I guess it doesn’t really…” Matt trails off. “I usually have a better filter than this, I swear. I’ve never met anyone from the cluster face-to-face before, it’s like thinking at a mirror, everything is getting bounced right back at me.”

“Kevin,” Nathaniel says, uncomfortable memories swirling in his gut. “He’s here?”

Matt’s eyes flick to the space at Nathaniel’s side. “He’s quite eager to talk to you, but Andrew’s trying to quarantine you from his lot until he can- _iie, pan de oishii desu!”_ He rolls his eyes in Nathaniel’s direction and nods to the pills in his fist. “Can I bump a few of those? He’s lecturing me about my carb intake now.” Nathaniel offers the pills, but Matt waves him off. “Joking, dude.” He glances at their identical orders and snorts. “This psychic-link shit is stronger than it looks. I’m in here for lunch most days, you must have picked up on my routine subliminally just by passing the storefront.”

“You think I came in here because of you?”

“That’s my guess. You can take as many blockers as you want, but if you keep wandering around my neighbourhood you’ll probably keep finding that happening. Finding things that are familiar even when they shouldn’t be.” Matt’s eyes flicker over him. “Unless you came here because you were looking for me. I mean, I don’t think you’re dangerous or anything, not if you’re one of us, but a few of the others are saying that…” Matt trails off, scowling at where Nathaniel imagines Kevin must be sitting. “It’s really hard to focus when you keep doing that. Seriously, go away before Andrew wakes up and kicks both our asses.” A brief pause, and his attention returns to Nathaniel.

“I wasn’t looking for you,” Nathaniel says. “I don’t want anything to do with this, or with you. Any of you. No offence, but I just want to be left alone.”

Matt’s eyebrows slide upwards. _Alone isn’t really how this works._ The words don’t pass his lips but end up in Nathaniel’s mind anyway, like Matt is making a point. _You’re part of us just as we’re a part of you, no matter how many pills you take. You don’t have a choice in the matter_. _Trust me, I’ve been there._

Nathaniel really, really doubts it. He stares down at his Pan de Mallorca like he’s going to find answers in the sugary crust. He’s lost the appetite that drew him inside in the first place. It probably wasn’t even his appetite he was feeling.

“It’s delicious. Try it.” Matt pushes Nathaniel’s plate towards him. When Matt takes a bite of his own, Nathaniel tastes the sugar bursting across his tongue. His stomach rolls as he shakes his head. Matt rolls his eyes as he chews. “If I asked what brought you to NYC, would you tell me?”

Nathaniel shakes his head again.

“No offence, dude, but you look like a homeless person. I know you’re trying to be all lone wolf, but you’ve got a friend in the city if you need one, okay? It’s in my interests to help you anyway.”

“It is?”

“If they get one of us, they get all of us.” Matt frowns. “You know who ‘they’ are, right?”

“I know enough,” says Nathaniel darkly. It’s Matt’s turn to look doubtful, but he accepts the answer.

“Either way, odds are we’ll keep running into each other whatever we do. ‘Specially if you’re only on those knockoff blockers.” He taps two fingers to his temple. “We basically have the same brain, right?” Nathaniel’s pained expression must betray him, but Matt only laughs. “I’m not that bad, am I?”

Nathaniel shakes his head. An idea occurs to him, dangerous and inadvisable but an idea all the same. “Can you get me better blockers?”

Matt’s expression shutters. His arms fold in on themselves, fingers tracing his inner forearms. “…I know people,” he says quietly. “How badly do you need them?”

“My life depends on it.”

Matt snorts, before realising Nathaniel isn’t joking. “Okay. Okay, I can try to… do you have a phone? Actually, no, bad idea, nothing that can be traced. We could meet back here…” He trails off, sighing. “Okay, how about this. I’ll get you what you want on a condition.”

Nathaniel narrows his eyes. He should have expected something like this. “Oh?”

“I wasn’t joking when I said you look homeless. You are, aren’t you?” He waits for Nathaniel’s reply. None comes, so he continues regardless. “The condition is that you let me put you up while you’re in town. I have a great couch that’s gotta beat the overpass by a long shot, and excellent film taste. You in?”

 _Trap, trap, trap_ , says Nathaniel’s mother. _Safe, safe, safe,_ says Matt.

Nathaniel weighs the pros and cons. Proximity to Matt, however kind he appears, means proximity to the others. He hasn’t talked to all of them yet, but he doubts it makes much of a difference given how the cluster appears to work. They probably all know his face from "sharing" it with each other, so the damage is already done.

“Deal?” says Matt. He holds out one hand, waiting.

“Deal.” Nathaniel shakes it briefly. The point of contact is strange, like buzzing beneath his skin. He wonders if this is how it always feels, this connection.

“So, what should I call you?” There’s something about the wording, like Matt knows a lie is coming but wants Nathaniel to know that he’s okay with it. That he could pull Nathaniel’s name from his head if he really wanted to, but he’s leaving the choice – the control – in Nathaniel’s hands.

Nathaniel replies quickly, smoothly, slipping into a new name like he would a new jacket. He’s done it a dozen times before, and he’s sure this won’t be the last. “Neil. Call me Neil.”

Matt smiles at him, a little sadly. “Welcome to New York, Neil. It’s great to meet you at last.”

Nathaniel – _Neil_ \- flashes a pasty smile back. They finish their food in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats on being adopted Neil
> 
> Kevin waiting to talk to Neil is like *kid standing outside candy store, breathing heavily, face pressed up against the glass*


	7. Interrogation, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Risk assessment is carried out on the cluster's newest member, and an apple is threateningly peeled.

Neil startles awake at six the following morning, heart hammering in his chest with the aftermath of a dream that wasn’t his. He would assume it was Matt’s – Matt is the only one close enough to break through Neil’s blockers, after all – but none of the images match what Neil has glimpsed of Matt’s life. They don’t seem to match _any_ life, a jumble of disordinate people and places with no clear thread connecting them.

But, as Neil is slowly realising, this is how it _works_.

Every second in proximity to Matt – someone else, someone _like him_ \- throws sparks on Neil’s curiosity. The obsession his mother spent years trying to suffocate is returning with as much force as the visions which birthed it. It’s clear from Matt’s presence – and Matt is a presence, no doubt about it – that the last faint chance that his visitors were all side-effects of a crumbling psyche has long evaporated. Neil had never been fully convinced by his mother’s denial of their existence, but it had been another layer of defence that made it easier to push the curiosity down, down, down. It was easier not to care about something if he could pretend it wasn’t real. It made Neil feel better on the days that his life felt like a hallucination too.

Matt is real in a way that Neil never will be. He chatters about his work, his friends, his apartment, his goldfish, as he shows Neil from room to room. It’s nice, or at least, it seems nice to Neil, who’s only frame of reference is an assortment of abandoned buildings grubby enough to squat in without attracting attention.

Matt offers Neil his bed, which Neil firmly declines, not mentioning that the couch will be the comfiest thing he’s slept on in months. It also means that there’s nothing between Neil and the door if he needs to make a swift departure. There’s a fire escape too, which makes Neil feel a little better about being three floors above ground level, if not entirely.

As disjointed images of hospitals and nightclubs and restaurants and basements muddle and evaporate, Neil considers asking Matt about the others. Ten, they called him, which meant nine people who could, without blockers barring the way, walk in and out of Neil’s head as they pleased. Could hijack his body, if the desire arose. Andrew had already done so, forcing Neil to drop his blockers until he could wring a crumb of truth from Neil’s desperation. Neil isn’t used to having a great deal of safety in his life but feeling unsafe in his own body is an uncomfortable new worry. He wonders if there’s a way of protecting himself when blockers fail, but that’s another question that would have to go to Matt. He doesn’t want Matt worrying about Neil’s motives more than he already is, which means keeping questions about the others or about blocking them out to a minimum.

He realises that he had startled awake so early because Matt did; he can feel the grind of Matt’s mind trying to rouse itself from drowsiness even a room apart. Neil had imagined that the constant sensation of someone else’s thoughts in his head would be awkward at best and suffocating at worst, but all he feels instead is a strange sort of calm. His mind still feels like his own, but with a warm wrapping of comfort around it moulded to the same shape as his own thoughts. It’s so calming that it’s disconcerting, and the paranoia in him pushes him straight back onto his guard, the words _false sense of security_ chiming like an alarm bell.

Matt sticks his head through the door to direct Neil to the cereal in his cupboards, and if he picks up on Neil’s quiet panic, he gives no indication.

Matt is an athlete of some kind, although Neil’s mind had been drifting when he shared the exact details. His cupboards are filled with protein snacks and nutritional foods and high-fiber everything, but Neil digs deep enough to find a straightforward box of cereal which he upends into a bowl. He knows he likes the taste before he tries it, which he assumes is another weird side-effect of Matt’s presence.

Neil is washing his bowl when the shower cuts off, and a moment later the shape of Matt’s mind… _ripples_. Neil freezes, letting the bowl fall into the sink with a clatter. Whoever is in Matt’s bedroom, it isn’t Matt. There’s someone else in his head.

He’s halfway to the front door when a voice stops him.

“Please don’t go. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Neil turns on the balls of his feet despite himself. The voice is Matt’s, but the accent isn’t. It’s a warm voice, like his, but a little more distant, perhaps cautious. The body language has changed too, as Matt stands with his hands clasped in front of him, shoulders rounded like a mind not used to being in such a large body.

“Neil,” she smiles, and he realises with a jolt that yes, it’s a she. “I just need to have a quick chat with you, and as you are taking blockers, Matt said that I could use him as a mouthpiece for a few minutes. Is that okay?”

 _No_ , is the obvious answer. It doesn’t make it past Neil’s lips. He didn’t know they could possess each other so completely, and it opens a whole new world of terrifying possibility. If he runs now, what will she do to Matt? He doesn’t trust the guy by any means, but he’s Neil’s key to a reliable supply of blockers and a decent person to boot. He doesn’t deserve to be abandoned to whoever this is. Her mind is projecting _peace_ and _reason_ in spades, but it’s like a lighthouse beacon; _be cautious or face dangerous waters_.

“What do you want?” says Neil.

Not-Matt takes a seat at the breakfast bar, as though she thinks making herself look smaller will make Neil more comfortable. “It’s more a question of what you want…Neil, is it?” She waits for his affirming nod before continuing. “My name is Renee. We met briefly, although I looked a little different then, of course.”

Neil nods. Rainbow hair and a prison uniform; she made quite an impression.

“And you’ve met Andrew, of course.”

Neil nods again. He must make some sort of face, because the corner of Renee-not-Matt’s mouth twitches. “As you’ve probably noticed, Andrew has taken on the responsibility for protecting his part of our cluster from outside threats, which he considers you to be. The responsibility for the other members is mine. A cluster divided in two isn’t conventional, but we aren’t a conventional cluster. I’m getting off track.” She takes an apple from the fruit bowl sitting on Matt’s table and picks up a knife from the bench. She begins to peel it, and the skin falls off in one long coil. “Andrew decided to handle you as part of his duties, and I raised no objections. Now, however, you are living with one of our cluster who falls under my protection. Do you see where this is going, Neil?”

Neil nods numbly, his eyes tracking the flash of the knife. “You have to make sure I’m not a threat to your people.”

“Are you?” Renee says. For a moment, Matt’s eyes are gone, replaced with a far darker gaze.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” says Neil, for what feels like the millionth time. “I just want to be left alone.”

Neil knows she believes him when the dark look leaves her eyes. She places the knife down on the table between them. “Okay. I’m choosing to trust you, even if I can’t say the same for Andrew.” She tilts her head to one side, considering. “I tried to be alone, once. I wasn’t until I gave myself to the others that I really understood what I had been missing out on.”

Something hot and painful flashes in the pit of Neil’s stomach. “Good for you,” he says lowly.

Renee is sensible enough not to push him. “It isn’t for everyone,” she accepts with a nod, “but there’ll always be a place for you amongst us if you ever decide to take it. That’s what being in a cluster is, after all. A part of a whole.” She offers Neil the peeled apple, but doesn’t seem surprised when he declines. She places it on the table beside the knife.

“Speaking of which,” she says after a pause, “Andrew wants to talk to you.”

 _I don’t want to talk to him_ , is another response Neil suspects will get him nowhere. Instead, “Then why doesn’t he?” He gestures to Renee-in-Matt’s-body.

Renee makes a noise that’s almost a laugh. “This isn’t exactly his style. Push back your dosage tonight, and you can ask him about it in person.”

“And if I don’t?”

Renee’s gaze his steady, her gentle smile unwavering. “It was nice to meet you, Neil. I hope we can talk again sometime.”

Then she blinks, and Matt is back, smiling sheepishly at him. “Morning, dude. Sorry to start so heavy with you. But hey, Renee seems to like you.”

“Don’t do that again.” Neil gets up from the table and storms in the direction of the bathroom, hoping a shower will be a good excuse to be left to his thoughts for a few minutes at least.

“Hopefully, I won’t have to,” Matt says in the last moments before Neil is out of earshot. He takes a bite of the apple just as Neil slams the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Renee we didn't get nearly enough of her protective streak in canon imo
> 
> Pour one out for Matt who is feeling 100% of Neil's stress and trying :) :) so hard :) :) not to let it show :) :)
> 
> Edit: Almost forgot to say, I'm [on twitter.](https://twitter.com/darkblueboxs) Or trying to be. Come say hi!


	8. Interrogation, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You tell me everything. I don’t kill you. Simple enough for you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Involuntary drugging, death threats

Neil seriously considers ignoring Renee’s request and taking his dose on time, but the comfort with which she handled Matt’s knife and the memory of her slamming his pursuers to the ground tells Neil that she’s far more dangerous than her sweet nature suggests. Regardless, Neil knows all too well the many ways Andrew has of getting what he wants. The price of ignoring Andrew’s summons is not one which he is willing to pay.

“You don’t have to go out if you don’t want to,” Matt says, feet kicked up on the couch as a basketball match blares on the TV. “He already knows where I live.”

“I know.” Neil hikes his rucksack over his shoulders, doesn’t miss the nervous flicker of Matt’s eyes towards the movement.

_You’re coming back, right?_ he says without speaking.

“I’ll buzz when I want back up,” says Neil as though his return is as inevitable as sunrise. Honestly, he’s on the fence; the warmer Matt is towards him, the more Neil feels like he’s sinking into a trap like a fly into honey. He pushes the thought away - there’s always a chance that Andrew will kill him, effectively making the decision for him.

The funk of New York’s streets hits him with brutally familiar reassurance. It’s a familiarity that is more Matt’s than Neil’s - he can feel his feet trying to steer him along Matt’s usual routes: the subway station, the gym, his favourite café. Neil tramples every impulse, searching for dark, for quiet, for solitude.

He finds it in a dingy alley filled with uncollected binbags and soggy cardboard boxes. Neil slumps against a wall and slides to the ground, barely sparing a thought for what the damp pavestones will do to his jeans.

“Of course you’d choose the company of the rats,” says a familiar voice. Neil doesn’t bother turning his head to confirm Andrew is at his side when the familiar cloud of cigarette smoke announces his presence on its own.

“I thought it might make you feel more at home,” Neil retorts. “So, have you decided whether you’re killing me or not?”

“Lucky for you, that’s today’s agenda. Kevin has made a bargain on your behalf.” There’s something about Andrew’s tone that is different from what Neil has grown used to; it’s flatter, evened out and devoid of his usual mania. Neil forces himself to meet Andrew’s gaze and sees that his drug-addled smile is nowhere to be seen. The Andrew he is meeting now is a different animal entirely.

“You’re off your drugs.” Neil doesn’t need to push to feel that the wall surrounding Andrew’s mind is gone. “If you think exposing yourself to me will prompt me to do the same, you’re mistaken.”

“I didn’t have you pegged as the naïve sort,” Andrew says. “Focus, Neil. If I don’t give you a fair chance at this, Kevin will never shut up about it.”

“Fine. What bargain did Kevin make for me?”

“You tell me everything. I don’t kill you. Simple enough for you?”

“No,” says Neil. The idea is so insane he almost laughs.

“Oh, I forgot to mention. You don’t get a say in this.” Andrew tilts his head to one side. “Nicky says you’ve never visited before.”

Neil shrugs. He remembers Nicky inviting him to step inside his head, see Mexico City through his eyes in the same way that the others visit him. The sudden change in topic makes him nervous, as though Andrew is a snake rearing back its head before striking. “I haven’t found the time.”

Andrew’s lips twitch. This seems to be the sober equivalent of his smile; it may be muted, but it’s no less threatening. He taps two fingers to the pulse-point of his wrist. “Look at that. Time.”

Neil’s world ripples and blurs.

He’s hit with a wall of sound so loud it hurts. He can still feel the cold alley wall at his back, but the sensation is smothered by the throbbing heart of a nightclub. It is packed with partygoers in elaborate leather outfits jumping to a baseline that sends vibrations shuddering through Neil in time with the music. Neil winces, tries to pull himself back to New York, but a hand clamps down on his wrist, holding him there.

“Stay,” says Andrew, and the word shoots through Neil’s chest like a bullet. The lights of the club cast strange, flickering shadows across his face, emphasising the angles of his jawline and the dark corners of his eyes. Neil stills under his grasp, and after a moment Andrew pulls his hand back. His slim-fitting all-black ensemble blends in far better in the club than it did in the alleyway. If any of the patrons could see Neil in his shabby, washed-out clothes he would be sticking out like a target painted neon. The thought makes his skin crawl. The hairs on the back of his arm are standing on end where Andrew touched him, and he can still feel the heat of the contact, mesmerizingly real, solid even. The only proof Neil has that he isn’t really in a nightclub exists inside his head; every sense tells him otherwise. He’s too cold from the alley yet too hot from the nightclub. Hunkered down against a wall and perched on a barstool too high off the ground for him at the same time.

“Seems like you are capable of telling the truth,” Andrew says as he watches Neil’s wonderment. “Clever. Keeps the rest of us guessing.”

“Nice trick. I’m still not telling you anything.”

Andrew ignores Neil in favour of snapping his fingers at a bartender who seems to have been waiting for his signal. The man places a shot glass filled with something glimmering and green in front of Andrew and slides a small packet across the table in one fluid movement. Andrew empties the packet into the glass with no concern for who might be watching.

“I thought you weren’t taking anything today?”

“This is a different kind of something,” Andrew says. The bartender rolls his eyes as though Andrew talking to himself is a regular occurrence before moving on. “Special occasion. Tell me, Neil, have you heard of cracker dust?”

Neil shrugs. The only kind of drugs that interest him are the kind that keep him alive and alone. He can’t understand why Andrew would invite Neil to a club just to watch him blow his mind apart.

“Lots of interesting side-effects, cracker dust. Especially for people like us.” Andrew raises the shot to Neil in a toast.

Neil sees the trap seconds before it snaps shut on his neck. He pulls back his fist to punch him – although truthfully, he has no idea if he even _can_ punch Andrew – but the drink is already sliding down Andrew’s throat, and Neil can feel it, and feels what comes after it, and worlds shimmer and collide around him.

“So,” says Andrew, the loose smile sliding around his face proving that he’s feeling this just as much as Neil, if not more. “Let’s talk.”

Neil’s universe shudders and folds in on itself, and everything turns black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw beans.


	9. Hangover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil confronts the after-effects of cracker dust, and smashes a perfectly innocent mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends I am alive.  
> Next time I say I want to have three fics on the go at once please gently bop me on the head with a rolled-up newspaper.
> 
> Content warnings: Drugs/alcohol abuse, medical stuff, brief nudity, mild blood/injury, panic attack.

Neil wakes – a surprise in itself – in a bed. Except, no, he’s not in a bed, he’s in a laboratory, holding black-and-white images up to the sterile light to examine an inflammation in the prefrontal cortex, and a technician just asked him a question, and he can’t answer it because the new kid is strolling through his head like he thinks it’s the local fucking dog park –

\- no, he’s in a lecture theatre, and some jerk in the row in front of him is watching a wrestling match on their laptop, for god’s sake, his focus is already shot from working all night for shitty tips, he can’t afford to fail this class –

\- the guard’s footsteps pad past his cell, but as soon as she’s out of sight he slips the book back out from beneath his pillow, ten more pages and then he’ll sleep, oh, hello Neil, did you mean to come here? - 

\- the weights clank up and down in time with the flex of his arms, a little too easily, he stops to adjust the settings of the weight machine, wait, you, you’re here, did Andrew say you could –

\- a bed. Not the first bed, but _bed_ seems right so Neil clings to it. Neil? He isn’t really awake yet, but the balcony doors are open spilling warm light across the sheets, and it’s hard to focus this early, but he’s curled up in the dead weight of Eric’s arms and he is _so stupidly happy_ , wait, no he isn’t, get off-!

Neil swears, kicks wildly at the naked man asleep on top of him with legs that aren’t his and tumbles out of the bed, and when he lands on the floor he’s back in his own body, in Matt’s bedroom, alone. Not _visiting_ , but there, tangled up in yellow and green sheets and his own sweat, and for a moment, everything is still. He tries to move. It’s a mistake.

Dizzy memories of the previous night swirl around him, rippling and distorted by the colliding worlds swamping him. He breathes in smoggy New York air, but layered underneath is the taste of half a dozen other cities, sneaking into his lungs and sinking into his bloodstream. Focus. _Focus._ He can control this. He has to block this before he loses himself entirely. But he can’t focus, because he’s remembering, remembering-

_“So,” said Andrew. “Let’s talk.”_

_Except they didn’t talk, didn’t need to, not like this. Crackers were the opposite of blockers; instead of building walls up, they tore them down. Neil’s train of thought melted like butter in a frying pan, spreading and dribbling over the edge, and Andrew’s mind was doing the same. He believed in a fair exchange, even if the rest of the world didn’t, and sometimes the best defence was none at all._

_It took Neil a moment to recognise that thought as Andrew’s and not his own._

Neil uses the bedframe as a crutch to pull himself to his feet. The crackers are still staining his thoughts like a bad hangover, lowering his ability to sift through the mess of the cluster to his own bubble of consciousness. He must have blundered through half-a-dozen minds on the way back to his own, and he can feel them stirring, turning towards him with searchlight-curiosity. With no blockers and the last of the crackers still tingling through his system, Neil is laid bare before them.

The thought of what his mother would do to him if she saw Neil like this jerks him forwards. He never even _drank_ last night, but his surroundings tilt and slide around him regardless. How did he get back to Matt’s apartment? He was in the alley, and then-

_Mutually assured destruction. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept, Neil._

_Andrew leaned over the bar to pour himself another shot, earning him an eye-roll from the staff. Neil’s thoughts were an incoherent mishmash of violent intentions. Andrew was almost impressed: Neil knew his way around a knife, and the different ways a man’s guts would slosh from his body depending on where he was cut. Each layer of this Russian doll of a man was more intricate and intriguing than the last._

_Focus, Neil. Less spying, more talking. Tell me about the big bad wolf who caught your scent._

He doesn’t have time to worry about the where and the how. What matters is that he’s in Matt’s apartment, _still_ , and if last night proved anything, it’s that he needs to get the hell away from these people as soon as he can.

Voices swim and worlds flicker as Neil stumbles into the bathroom. Matt doesn’t use blockers, but maybe he has something, anything, that will fight off the after-effects of whatever Andrew did to him. Matt is asleep on the couch when Neil passes him, twitching and muttering. He’s dreaming about a sports science paper due in by the end of the week, except it isn’t his paper but someone else’s, the girl Neil saw in the lecture theatre, and Neil only realises he’s being drawn into Matt’s dream when he trips over his own feet in his distraction. Focus, focus, focus. Too many people, too many thoughts.

The contents of Matt’s bathroom closet are disappointing. Neil ignores the plastic tub of vitamin supplements, squints at the small glass bottles labelled _depo-testosterone_ before similarly disregarding them, and picks up a box of painkillers in a brandless, white box. Neil’s mother was always careful with what she gave him, never sure if Neil would react well or badly or at all to whatever she could buy over the counter, but if Matt uses them then they would probably be fine for him, or at the very least not kill him outright. Neil flips the box over to check the dosage, and curses as the letters blur before his eyes. One moment, they’re in Japanese, the next, Arabic, then – Korean?

He hurls the box at the wall and braces himself against the sink, breathing heavily. Then, he looks up, and catches sight of his reflection in the cabinet mirror.

Piercing, cold blue eyes look back at him. Neil’s legs buckle at the sight of his natural eye colour. Every inch of him itches like a raw wound, open and exposed. He can’t conjure a single explanation for what might have possessed him to remove his contacts in Andrew’s presence. At least, none where he did so willingly. He remembers the night Andrew seized control of his hands to keep his blocker just out of reach and feels sick to his stomach as he imagines Andrew peeling the lenses from Neil’s eyes through possessed fingers.

_“I can’t,” Neil gasped. He was choking on the perfume and sweat of strangers on the other side of the planet. Bodies shifted and writhed in the strobing lights in flashes of movements, and it felt unreal and too real all at once. Andrew was the only one not dancing, the only source of stability in the club. “He’ll kill me.”_

_“Humour me a moment,” Andrew replied. “Look past your own fear. Look past yourself. Your self-obsessed sense of preservation. Your lonely little plans and exit strategies and your head full of dark alleyways and men with guns. What do you see?”_

_The music and lights dulled and faded. Neil hadn’t returned to the alley, however; he and Andrew were somewhere else, somewhere just for them. “You.”_

_“Am I afraid?”_

_With Andrew’s invitation, Neil looked, carefully turning over the discordant strings of Andrew’s consciousness. It was like reading a book in a language he barely spoke, largely incomprehensible but veined with familiar words and phrases that slotted into Neil’s own vocabulary. He couldn’t be entirely sure what he was looking at, but fear was not it._

_“No.”_

_“Then use it.”_

_It took a beat for Neil to figure out what Andrew was telling him before understanding flowed from Andrew’s mind to his. Andrew was offering to drown Neil’s fear, to smother it with his own certainty, his assurance, his strength. The suggestion should have terrified Neil, the loss of control that came with surrender to Andrew’s mind, but somehow, it didn’t. Andrew’s intentions were laid bare to Neil just as Neil’s were to him, and while they weren’t exactly good, they weren’t exactly bad either._

_Neil was so, so tired. Of running, of hiding, of being alone, of being nothing._

_Nothing. The word bounces from him to Andrew to him like feedback screeching through a sound system. He forces himself to meet Andrew’s gaze, deep hazel eyes turned dark, and for a moment, they cut through the panic and the mania to something as deep as the bond of the cluster entwining them._

_Understanding._

Neil runs a shaking hand through his dark curls as he studies himself in the bathroom mirror. The man in the reflection looks half-feral; if Neil saw himself in the street he would cross the road to avoid him. He remembers, now, that Andrew did not remove Neil’s contact lenses; Neil did it himself. It was part of the deal they struck. The offer. Andrew made Neil an offer he couldn’t refuse. Neil cannot, for the life of him, remember what it was. Nor can he remember what he paid for it.

There’s a flicker of movement over Neil’s shoulder. Neil looks past his own reflection to the man standing behind him, wincing as he is hit with an unfiltered wave of thought and feeling that he is unable to defend himself against. The mind is familiar, but the accompanying face more so. Neil doesn’t need the tattoo to recognise him; a decade couldn’t wash the memory of that face away. Blue eyes meet green.

“It really _is_ you,” says Kevin. “Nathaniel.”

The sound of his name turns Neil inside-out. His panic prompts another aftershock of cracker effects to shudder through his veins, and for a moment Neil’s reality slips out like a rug jerked out from under his feet. He fumbles for his consciousness as it slips through his grasp like a bar of soap, and as his panic rolls out from him in waves he feels it spill into the others, and turn back on him as their panic grows to match pace with his. Thoughts and feelings and voices crowd him, and Neil blinks, and the bathroom mirror is in pieces in the sink and on the floor and beads of blood are seeping through Neil’s clenched fist. In the mirror fragments, he can see slices of himself staring back through other people’s faces, his eyes flashing brown, green, hazel-

“What are you doing?!” Kevin is still there, unfortunately, but now he’s clutching his hands to his temples like drills are boring into his skull. “Stop screaming!”

“I’m not screaming!” Neil snaps, the denial coming out breathless, like his lungs aren’t pushing the oxygen where he needs it.

“What the fuck?” And suddenly Nicky is at Neil’s shoulder. “Jesus, you’re splitting my head open. Did you kick my boyfriend? What the _fuck_?”

“Is someone dying?” The girl from the lecture theatre, now, and more of them are appearing, a blur of faces crowding around him, hemming him in. “Oh my God, he looks like he’s dying. What did you _do_ to him?”

Too many people, too many voices, and Neil can see and hear and feel all of them at once, is all of them at once, and he can hear the screaming too, now, because it’s coming from his own head like a distress beacon and _he can’t make it stop_.

“-someone wake Matt-!”

“- _mais c’est quoi son problème? Ton cousin m’a dit que_ -”

“Can one of you shut him up, I can’t focus-!”

“- _pero no es mi culpa, porque_ -”

“-maybe if we gave him a little breathing room-”

“ _Que caralhos aconteceu?! Eu dormi por dez minutos só!_ ”

“Do something, you idiot!”

Too many people, too many faces, all looking at him, all looking _into_ him, and one of them tries to put a hand on his shoulder so he swings a fist, and is amazed to feel it connect with something squishy and disgruntled, and then footsteps are thundering through the apartment, _real ones_ , and Matt is already in the bathroom but the door swings open and he’s there _again_ , and he knows this is real by the way Matt recoils at the fragment of mirror clenched in Neil’s fist.

For the first time since he woke up, Neil’s mind goes quiet.

“Neil,” says Matt quietly, with his mouth and not his mind. “Put the glass down.”

The glass slips from Neil’s fingers and smashes on the bathroom tiles. He doesn’t even remember picking it up. “It’s too loud,” Neil says, and he isn’t sure he says it in a language he knows, isn’t even sure he says it out loud.

“I know, buddy, I feel it too.”

“Yeah.” Neil says, and is surprised to find laughter bubbling in his chest. “I think I’m going to faint now. Matt, could you help me?”

Neil is conscious long enough to feel Matt’s arms wrap around him, and then everything goes mercifully, beautifully dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to [Anna](https://twitter.com/dogintheboiler) for the Portuguese dialogue and for just generally being awesome.
> 
> At this stage I probably owe Neil a formal letter of apology. Just for everything.


	10. R.A.V.E.N

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil dreams of a childhood that wasn't his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying something new with this chap! Hope you like!
> 
> Content warnings: psychological/emotional abuse, minor injuries

Neil dreams of grey cement walls, the harsh, cutting smell of disinfectant that itches in his lungs. Beneath is the damp smell that comes from living underground, old and musty and, somehow, familiar. The room he is standing in has no windows, no decorations, and precious little by way of personal artefacts. Two beds, crisp black sheets, a bedside table apiece stacked high with textbooks. Two doors: one looks onto a dull corridor through a circle of glass cut into the metal. The other opens onto a small bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, Neil sees not his own reflection, but Kevin’s. A younger Kevin, more like the one Neil saw in an empty warehouse as his mother forced blockers down his throat.

“But why bring them here? Surely they don’t belong in our department.” The words may leave Neil’s mouth, but he doesn’t have the faintest clue what they mean.

“The Butcher picked them up practically on our doorstep. They’re just keeping them in our holding rooms until they get transferred out. Probably to the Tokyo division.” The boy who answers him wears the same black clothes as Kevin, featureless and form-fitting, with a small red logo on the left breast, a bird of some kind. He’s shorter than Kevin, although nothing in his body language seems to admit to it; his chin juts out, shoulders squared with a self-assurance beyond his years. He says _Tokyo division_ in the same way Neil imagines children of a similar age would say _Disneyland._ “Let’s go check them out.”

“What? We can’t do that!”

The boy steps forward suddenly, and Kevin (no, Neil, he’s Neil, he’s Neil, why is this so difficult-?!) fights the urge to step back. “This is _my_ division. Everything within these walls is _my_ domain, and I will do what I want in it.”

Riko (because this is Riko, they grew together, spent every minute of every day together, how did he forget-?) isn’t in charge of the Raven division, not really, not yet, but Kevin isn’t foolish enough to point that out. He will be, one day, his ascension through the ranks as inevitable as sunrise. The only thing standing between Riko and command of the Replication And Vocative Exchange Neurology division is time.

The problem is that Riko thinks he’s in charge already, as do most of the staff. Kevin is in no position to complain; he benefits from his brother’s influence too, exemplified by the _2_ on his cheekbone. When they finally crack the code to sensate replication, Riko will be first in line to receive the upgrade, and Kevin will be right behind him.

Kevin’s mother told him how it felt to be a sensate. Sometimes, her voice would change and other people would borrow her body, entertaining Kevin late into the night with strange stories of strange lands, far away from their stuffy little flat. More than anything, he wants to _understand_ , to see the world as she saw it, layer upon layer of minds and eyes casting the world in a kaleidoscope of lights.

It would be possible, one day. Riko told him so the day they met; if Kevin stuck by his side, Riko would turn him into a sensate. The science was being created before their eyes; it was only a matter of time.

But while Kevin may be comfortable sneaking into laboratories and staff briefings with Riko’s confidence to hide behind, he is hesitant to infringe on anything connected to the Butcher. The tracing division, from what he has heard, has a… different attitude towards sensates from the Ravens. Kevin has met the Butcher, who has been in charge of the AXE branch longer than he can remember. His smile alone was enough to make Kevin nervous, and he had a habit of talking about sensates less like they were people and more like they were prey, which set Kevin’s skin crawling for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate. Riko fails to share Kevin’s reservations.

“We’re going,” Riko says decisively. His tone, as always, leaves no room for argument, and so Kevin follows.

“Why is she handcuffed?” Kevin whispers as they peer through the one-way glass partition. The sensate is younger than he imagined, and so… ordinary. She’s wearing a cardigan and heels, like she just finished a long day at the office. The only giveaway that anything is amiss is a tear along the inseam of the cardigan, which she picks at as she stares, unseeing, at the opposite wall. Unremarkable. Human. Riko is annoyed that he still has to stand on his tiptoes to see through the window, so he doesn’t answer immediately.

“So she doesn’t try to escape, _obviously_ ,” he replies, tone like that of an adult explaining the alphabet to a toddler, without the accompanying patience.

“Why would she want to escape? Doesn’t she want our help?” Kevin studies the woman. Her lips are moving, but only slightly, as though she’s trying to hide the fact that she’s speaking.

Riko snorts. “You can be so _stupid_ sometimes, Kevin.”

Kevin wrinkles his nose. He learned to squash the resentment that came from living two steps behind Riko long ago. It would be better once they became sensates. With one mind, together, they would finally be on the same footing. No more of Riko’s vague, all-knowing dismissals that he delighted in waving under Kevin’s nose, begging him to ask questions that Riko would smugly refuse to answer. Kevin would finally _understand_ instead of waiting for the scraps of information Riko dangled over his head.

“What about the other one?”

Riko leads them down a corridor to another holding room. The man inside has a black eye, and his nose is crooked as though recently broken. His lips move, too.

“They’re talking to each other,” Kevin realises with a start. He has never witnessed both ends of the exchange before. It’s mesmerising. Apart, and yet, together.

“Not like they have anyone else to talk to,” Riko snorts at Kevin’s puzzled expression. “Didn’t you hear? They’re the only ones left in their cluster.”

“What happened to the others?”

Riko smiles smugly, delighted at having drawn Kevin into asking another question he can refuse to answer. “Stuff.”

Kevin huffs, but knows that any further questions may as well be directed to a brick wall. Their breath is fogging up the window; his fingers leave imprints in their wake. “How terrible for them.”

Riko’s amusement only grows. “Not to worry, Kevin. They won’t have to worry about it for much longer.”

Kevin nods, before turning his attention back to the glass. “Because we’re going to help them.”

“Yeah,” says Riko, delighted. “We’re going to help them. Of course.”

Kevin fails to hear the sarcasm in his voice. The memory fades to black, and Neil wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing them as kids hurt more than I expected :(
> 
> Also just a note to say I'll be posting a few pieces for the aftg summer event this & next week so keep an eye out for those! And check out #aftgsummer on tumblr, twitter etc to see what everyone else is up to :)


	11. One of Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil breaks some more of Matt's stuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead! Yay!  
> Finishing the atla au took more time than expected, sorry folks.
> 
> Fair warning: updates are probably going to be a little less regular while I get myself back on track writing-wise. Don't panic if I go quiet for a while! 
> 
> Content warnings: domestic violence mention, injuries, traumatic flashback, violence, referenced loss of autonomy, referenced panic attack, referenced abuse

There’s a figure standing by the bed when he wakes, although when Neil sees that it isn’t Matt, he snaps his eyes shut again.

“You can’t pretend to be asleep. I’m in your head, I can hear you panicking.”

Neil groans. “Go away, Nicky.”

“Nu-uh. We’re taking shifts watching you. In case you go nuts again.”

Neil jerks upright to fix Nicky with a glare. The world is still a little wobbly, but survivably so. “I didn’t go nuts.”

“Gonna have to overrule you there. You punched my boyfriend. Do you remember? He thinks I’m having night terrors now.” Nicky sniffs. “If I end up fending off a domestic violence lawsuit, I’m sending the bill to your address.”

“Good luck with that,” Neil mutters. He hasn’t had a real address since he was…ten? Twelve?

“Matt’s address, then,” Nicky says, yawning. “Your boy can afford it. Look at his place! And his face. And the rest of him. I mean, tell me you’ve noticed, right?”

Neil stares at him. Nicky rolls his eyes. “He’s wasted on you. Wait, you’re not a huge homophobe or something, are you? Is that why you punched Eric?!”

“I – No? I don’t remember.” Neil scrubs a hand across his face. Someone – Matt, presumably – bandaged it while he slept. Neil thinks guiltily of the bathroom mirror. Seven years of misfortune, and Neil hadn’t exactly been lucky to begin with. “I was just confused. How… how did I even do that? And I remember, there was this scream, it came from my head, but I didn’t even realise I was doing it.” A scream that made every person in his head come running to him; Neil doesn’t throw the term _nightmare scenario_ around loosely, but-

Nicky shrugs. “Crackers can be unpredictable at the best of times. But for someone like you, someone who’s spent most of their life on blockers… I guess it was like a double-whammy. You haven’t even learned to deal with normal-level sensate stuff, and then Andrew…” Nicky trails off with a sigh. “That boy will be the death of me.”

“I don’t remember what we talked about,” Neil says. “I don’t even remember how I got home. Is he still going to kill me?”

Nicky snorts. “If the answer to that was yes, you’d already be dead. You’ll have to ask him yourself if you want any more detail than that. All he said to me was that you’re one of us, now.”

“I don’t think I ever had a choice in the matter,” Neil says darkly.

“No. One of _us_. Andrew’s lot. The monsters, the others call us. You’re under Andrew’s protection, for better or for worse.”

“Oh,” says Neil. He should be more worried, he really should be, but his head is still too sore and soupy to handle any emotion stronger than discomfort. As is most of the rest of him; he feels like he was put through a trash-compactor in his sleep. “How _did_ I get home?”

“Ah,” says Nicky. He suddenly looks oddly sheepish. “Well, you were both pretty fucked up, so Andrew told me to get you home safely.”

And suddenly Neil can see Nicky, finding Neil shaking and half-way out of his mind, covered in grime and barely responsive. He sees Nicky nudging Neil out of the way, picking up the mental reigns, taking control of Neil’s body to walk him home. The visual brings a surge of bile to Neil’s throat.

“You took over my body.”

Nicky winces. “I couldn’t just leave you in an alley. Andrew would have killed me.”

“You could have got Matt.”

“So he could spend half the night looking for you? Besides, he’s one of Renee’s lot, we’re not really supposed to interact.”

Neil doesn’t respond for a moment, fighting back the mix of panic and confusion and bone-deep exhaustion. He feels, for a moment, the strange, terrified surge of feeling that broke him apart in Matt’s bathroom. He fights it back before he can bring the whole cluster down on his head again. He still feels like he can hear them all at once, but it’s more of an indistinct buzz in the back of his head, intertwining threads that he could pull on to follow to the source if he chose. Manageable, at least, for the moment.

“Go away, Nicky.”

Nicky, mercifully, doesn’t push the point. “Fine. But I have to tell one of the others that you’re awake. We’re not ready to leave you on your own just yet. Any requests? I can get Andrew, if you want to ask him about-”

“No,” Neil answers quickly. He is _not_ ready to see Andrew again. Certainly not in this state. He remembers the strange, foggy images of his dream, the cold corridors and the colder smile. “Kevin,” he says at last. “I want to speak to Kevin.”

Nicky whistles. “On your own head, be it.”

And then he’s gone.

Matt left him a post-it note on the kitchen counter, which Neil appreciates more than he would have the man simply appearing in his head to convey his message. He promises to bring take-out with him when he gets back from work, as though Chinese will dissuade Neil from running off while he’s out. Kevin appears over Neil’s shoulder as he’s stirring coffee, startling Neil badly enough that he almost drops the mug.

“Have you finished with your little…” Kevin pauses as he looks for the right words. Neil hears him dismiss _tantrum, fit, attack,_ and rolls his eyes when he settles on, “…panic?”

“I had a weird dream about you,” Neil says.

“Oh,” Kevin says dubiously.

“ _Not that kind of dream_!”

Kevin winces. “You spend enough time sharing brain cells with Nicky, you get used to assuming the worst.” Then his eyes widen, curiosity peaking. “You read that assumption straight from my mind. Your level of vocative advancement considering how long you’ve spent on blockers is-”

“You were in a facility,” Neil interrupts. “Like a hospital, except there were… prisoners.”

Kevin twitches. “No.”

“Who is Riko? Is he someone in our cluster?”

“ _No_ ,” Kevin snaps, moving back from Neil as though scalded by his thoughts. “Stop thinking about him, I don’t want to see-!” A flurry of memories flash past, too quickly for Neil to catch hold, and then-

Agony shoots through his hand, and Neil shrieks as what feels like every bone in his arm is twisted and snapped, and the kitchen falls away to somewhere too dark and too bright all at once-

The smash as his coffee mug shatters on the floor jerks him back to reality. Kevin flickers in and out for a moment as he collects himself, his arm clenched against his chest. “Don’t…” Kevin pants, “Don’t do that again.”

Neil isn’t even sure what it was he did. He looks down at his hand, blinks away afterimages of blood and bone, flexes it experimentally. It’s fine. He’s fine.

“This isn’t going to do at all,” Kevin says after a moment. “You have a great deal of ability, but no control over it whatsoever. You are not fit to be unleashed upon the cluster-”

“I don’t _want_ to be unleashed on your stupid cluster. How many more times do I have to say this? I want to be left _alone_.”

Kevin looks at Neil as though he’s stupid. “ _Alone_ is not a word that has any place in your vocabulary. You took Andrew’s offer, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Neil stares at the pool of spilled coffee spreading across the kitchen tiles. First a mirror, then a mug; it was a bad day for Matt’s possessions. He didn’t deserve any of this. Neil had subjected him to enough. “I don’t know anything. I’m tired, I’m confused, my head feels like play-dough, I can’t get a straightforward answer about anything…”

Kevin closes his eyes. His eyebrows are pinched together in irritation, but there’s a hidden slither of sympathy that doesn’t make it into his expression. “Everyone goes through this at first. It’s easier if you don’t fight it.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You wanted this. I saw, you were… you were trying to figure out how to turn yourselves into sensates, weren’t you?”

Shame floods the room, so thick it makes Neil’s eyes sting.

“I was… deeply mislead.”

“Mislead,” Neil repeats, and now his hands are shaking all over again. “The people you were working with. They’re the same people hunting me. They _hunt_ and they _torture_ and they _kill_ and after everything Andrew put me through to make sure I wouldn’t pose a threat to you it turns out _you’re one of them_.”

“Not anymore,” Kevin says frantically. “This is beside the point. You need to train yourself to have better control, so that you won’t do yourself or the cluster any more damage.”

“Screw the cluster.” Neil storms from the kitchen through to the living room, but Kevin continues to flicker in the corner of his eyeline regardless. He yanks his backpack from its hiding place under the coffee table and shoulders it as he heads for the door.

“Where are you going?!” Kevin yells. Neil doesn’t bother answering; if Kevin wanted to be a sensate so badly, he can use sensate abilities to get his damn answer. _Anywhere but here._

He yanks the door open, but Matt appears before his eyes, and for a moment the flat flickers and dissolves into a street view. But that couldn’t be right; Matt was supposed to be at work.

“Don’t freak out,” Matt says, “But I think I’m being followed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sharing brain cells with nicky is downright hazardous, tbh


	12. Disappear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil asks for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARCH!!!!!! You single-handedly resurrected my ability to write <33333
> 
> Content warnings: violence, panic attack, death mention

_“Give your mind to Kevin. Give your back to me.” If Andrew had been speaking with him face-to-face, his words would have been washed away by the throbbing nightclub music. As it was, Andrew’s voice sank straight into Neil’s mind like syrup, slow and inescapable. It made it impossible to focus on his own train of thought, to keep Neil’s motives from becoming tangled up in Andrew’s. His amber eyes were like a rippling pool bouncing Neil’s reflection back at him, distorted by Andrew’s assumptions and distrust._

_It took Neil a moment to find his voice again. “You don’t want my mind. You don’t want anything to do with me.”_

_“I think you know that’s not true.” Andrew’s eyes flicked up, flicked down, barely a twitch but the motion caught in Neil’s mind and stuck there. “You’re tired of being nothing. Kevin will make you something.”_

_Something. A thought as dangerous as it was tantalising, a pipe dream packed in a pipe bomb._

_“You can’t protect me.” Neil’s doubt spoke for him, coating the air between them in cobwebs. “Not from this.”_

_“Only one way to know for sure.” The vice-like grip of Andrew’s consciousness loosened, and the noise of the city began to seep back in. Neil could wrench himself free of the nightmare now, if he really wanted to, but something in Andrew’s tone held him in place a little longer. Andrew’s resolve was addictive; for so long Neil had known nothing but fear and flight. The taste of a world where one’s strength and resolve could be worn like armour was one Neil could cleanse from his pallet no more easily than he could escape the man who put it there. Neil couldn’t tell if this was a window Andrew had opened into his mind on purpose, or if Neil’s subconscious had been drawn to the light pouring from within after a lifetime in the shadows. The want – for Andrew’s life, Andrew’s strength, Andrew’s…something, burned._

_“One day,” Andrew continued, oblivious or uncaring about Neil’s turmoil, “Running won’t be an option any longer. When that day comes, you will give yourself to me.”_

_Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Neil thought. The twitch of Andrew’s lips told him that he caught the sentiment. What surprised Neil most was that Andrew was giving him a choice. He had already proven that he could seize Neil’s body on a whim. Still, he would not take control of Neil’s life unless Neil agreed._

_Even with the threat of a slow and agonising death hanging over him, Neil couldn’t imagine giving himself to Andrew. His mother taught him to prize his life above all else, and to put it in the hands of this man felt like an insult to her memory._

_“No,” said Neil, “I won’t.”_

_Andrew tapped two fingers to his forehead. “When you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He trailed his other hand along the rim of his glass. Neil could feel the condensation dancing across his fingertips. “Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”_

_Without warning, Andrew dumped the drink over his head, and Neil jolted back into himself, the phantom sensation of soaked skin stinging in the New York wind. Grey clouds swarmed the skyline, or perhaps just his vision, and at last Neil collapsed into unconsciousness._

“Don’t freak out,” Matt says, “But I think I’m being followed.”

Kevin makes a stricken sound as his panic screams through Neil like the screech of violin strings. Like a plug jerked from a socket, their connection vanishes, leaving Neil and Matt on their own.

Neil doesn’t think, just follows the thread of Matt’s panic, and suddenly he’s in the street. Neil stumbles, breath catching in his throat, but like a steadying hand on his back, Matt’s gratitude and relief catch him. Neil isn’t cruel enough to point out that the relief is unwarranted – because really, what can Neil do to help?

Matt is weaving through the crowds, but his body language is too tense to pass as casual, and Neil doesn’t need to be in his head to recognise his panic.

“Head down,” Neil murmurs. “Relax your shoulders. Look bored.” He tries not to hear his mother’s harsh tone echoing in his instructions.

It’s a drizzly, grey day, and the New Yorkers braving the streets walk with their hoods pulled low and their eyes on the pavement ahead of them. It’s for this reason that the two suited men across the street stick out; Neil can’t see where their eyes are trained through their reflective sunglasses, but he doesn’t need to. They were the same men who attacked Neil outside the bookie’s shop. Neil is sick to his stomach as he realises, _stupid, stupid, stupid_ , that they must have followed him here. He has led them straight to Matt, and the surge of guilt is almost enough to throw Neil out of Matt’s head.

He can tell by the panicked dart of Matt’s eyes that he’s following Neil’s train of thought.

“You said that Renee is supposed to look out for you.” Neil fights down the instinct to keep his head down – nobody else can see him here, after all – and fixes his gaze on the suited men as they cross the road. “Can’t you call her or something?”

_Asleep_ , Matt thinks, jaw tensing as he forces the words through his head instead of his mouth. _Too late for me. Save yourself._

The street flickers out of sight, and Neil is back in Matt’s flat, his rucksack heavy on his shoulder. Matt’s words hit him with the weight of a sledgehammer, understanding and resignation and goodbye. He’s telling Neil he owes him nothing, when really Neil owes him _everything_.

The problem is that Neil is still inside Matt’s head, can feel the fear Matt is trying so hard to wrestle down. He’s trying to let Neil get out before he’s pulled in, but the truth is that Neil is already in, was the one to pull Matt down with him. And Matt isn’t like Neil, not raised on a life of running. He has friends, family, a job, a life. He doesn’t know how to survive on his own.

Grief crushes Neil, so heavy that he struggles to breathe through it. He didn’t realise how alone he felt in the wake of his mother’s death until Matt found him. And suddenly, Neil knows, somewhere deep and primal that was crushed under years of blockers and his mother’s fury, that he cannot leave Matt to face this alone.

“Matt,” Neil whispers. “Let me do this.”

Matt understands. He falls back, letting Neil take control, and suddenly Neil _is_ Matt, stumbling on legs that are far too gangly. He chokes down a cough as street smog fills a pair of lungs that aren’t his. He takes a quick left, then another. Matt knows the street layout better than Neil, and their knowledge blends into a half-decent escape route as Neil eliminates the obvious and the risky directions with ease. Neither this body nor this city belongs to him, but no matter the circumstances Neil will always know how to run.

The next time he makes a turn, he breaks into a sprint, crashing into pedestrians as he bolts across the street, ignoring the blare of car horns as he throws himself down the subway escalator. He leaps over the ticket barrier – and wow, Matt’s long legs make it so much _easier_ – but instead of heading down to the platform he turns and heads for the opposite exit. He can hear footsteps behind him, but he knows they won’t attack him with so many witnesses.

He – they? – burst back out onto the street, eyes screwing up against the bright grey sky, and just as they’re figuring out their next move something catches at Matt’s ankle, sending them crashing to the ground. Neil twists around, blood running cold as he sees one of the agents smiling down at him. They saw right through Neil’s feint, and split up to cover the exits instead of chasing him down towards the subway lines.

The man shifts, and something flashes in his sleeve – a needle. Neil knows that if it touches his skin they’re as good as dead. No, no, no-!

“My turn,” says Matt, out loud and with his own mouth, and before Neil can blink Matt has taken the reigns again. In one quick move he jumps to his feet and decks the man with a right hook so sharp Neil is astounded it didn’t knock his head off. His sunglasses tumble to the ground, shattered, but before the agent can react Matt follows up with another blow to his gut which sends him sprawling.

“Matt!” Neil yells as the second man reaches the entrance. At the same moment, a sleek black car pulls up to the kerb.

“Neil,” Matt says breathlessly. It may be a fake name, but Neil wants to curse Matt out for speaking it out loud all the same. “Tell Dan-!”

“They’re not getting you,” Neil says, but as the men approach Neil seizes up, his worst nightmare unfolding before his borrowed eyes. He has known nothing but this fear all his life, but it fits differently in Matt’s body, and Neil doesn’t know how to cope with it.

Memories from the nightclub throb inexplicably through Neil’s chest. Running didn’t work; they need something else, something stronger, something Neil can’t bring on his own.

_Give your mind to Kevin. Give your back to me._

Protection. Andrew offered Neil protection. There was a price to pay, Neil is sure, but he’s too preoccupied to chase the last threads of fog from his memory. Matt doesn’t belong to Andrew, but Neil could. It’s their only chance.

“Andrew,” Neil says, not knowing if this is even how it works. He has never tried to call one of the others to him before. “Andrew. Help us. Help us, _please_.”

And, of course, nothing happens. He’s standing in the kitchen of a soon-to-be dead man, talking to the walls.

_Am I afraid?_

_No._

_Then use it._

He pushes past the crackling layers of his and Matt’s fear, reaches deep into the part of his mind that tingles with sensations that aren’t his own, and finds at its core a ball of… something Neil has never known before.

Neil lets out a slow, steady breath as the strength of another man grinds his fear to dust.

“This was not part of our deal.” Andrew barely spares Matt a passing glance despite the men closing in on him. The world has ground to bullet-time, and he watches with lazy disinterest as the needle inches closer.

“If they take Matt, I’m as good as dead too.”

“And I should care because…?”

“Save him,” Neil says, “And you can have me. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Andrew steps forward, and if either of them were really there Neil is sure he would feel Andrew’s breath against his skin. “I want nothing,” Andrew says, the words sharp as though he wishes to slice Neil open with them. Then, “Yes or no?”

Neil doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to, doesn’t care. “Yes.”

Andrew nods, and Neil’s world doubles up and folds in on itself. He’s in his body, then Andrew is in his, then he’s in Matt’s in his in Andrew’s, and for a moment there’s too many places and sensations to make sense of. He reaches for something to steady himself with, and then Andrew is there.

Andrew’s mind blends seamlessly with his, knowledge and strength and power and _anger_ , more than Neil knows how to hold in.

_So don’t hold it in,_ Andrew thinks, and suddenly Neil knows exactly what to do.

Matt’s body is a powerhouse already, carrying all the strength and endurance of a career in athleticism, but Andrew has handed Neil something feral, vicious, _brutal_ , and the combination makes for something that no number of agents could be prepared for. From Andrew to Neil to Matt, the fight flows thick as blood, and just as the needle is about to pierce Matt’s skin they move as one to grab the man’s wrist.

The agent screams. Their grip is literally bone-shattering.

_Kick_ , Andrew thinks, and Neil follows, and Matt sweeps the man’s legs out from beneath him. _That isn’t a legal boxing move_ , Matt complains reflexively, and for a moment Neil is caught in a battle between Matt’s refined, professional style and Andrew’s instincts. Common sense wins out, and suddenly they’re back on their feet, charging the agent in front of them. The sound of a car door clunking at their back may as well be a gunshot, but with the second agent knocked flat once more, their path is finally clear.

“Now, do what you do best, Ghost,” Andrew whispers in the silence of Matt’s kitchen. “ _Disappear.”_

Neil swings the bag pack over his shoulder once more and starts to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How to bond with ur bro, step one: offer to die for him

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please remember to drop a comment so I can get that sweet sweet endorphin rush.
> 
> Come see what else I'm up to [on tumblr](https://darkblueboxs.tumblr.com) [and twitter.](https://twitter.com/darkblueboxs)


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